Spirited Away and Back Again
by alchemyarchetype
Summary: Chihiro has been vastly changed by her experience in the Spirit World. Now that she's back in the world of the living, with a normal life and normal expectations she finds herself unable to live as she knows she should. One shot, post movie. Chihiro/Haku.


Chihiro woke with bright sunlight streaming through a crack in her curtains. With a muffled, incoherent word, she rolled away from the light and buried her face into her pillow.

Around her bed, boxes were piled up in slap-dash towers that leaned drunkenly against each other, each precarious edifice threatening to topple over at each gust of wind that fluttered through the curtains.

"Chihiro!" her mother called up the stairs, "C'mon, honey it's time to get up!"

With another inarticulate groan, Chihiro sat up and rubbed blearily at her eyes. The enormous shirt she had found wrapped around some of her more fragile possessions served as dust-covered night gown. As she scrubbed her hands over her face, she looked around her barely unpacked room and recalled her life, so different than the one that she had left a two weeks ago.

The sudden return to the living world was more of a culture shock than Chihiro would ever have imagined; the six weeks she had spent in the spirit world had left its mark on her in more ways than one.

Around one thin wrist, a shimmering band woven by Zeniba reminded the fey child of everything she had experienced and assured her that the whole thing hadn't just been a dream.

"Chihiro!" her mother called up the stairs again, "Come down, please!"

Before the trip into the strange and wonderful world that Chihiro and her family had stumbled upon, she had been a sullen and –she could admit it now- spoiled child. Now she moved and acted with a strange, wary grace. Her eyes watched without judgment, fear or any hurry.

Her parents weren't precisely _surprised_ with her sudden metamorphism but they were pleased. Their once-difficult daughter had transformed (to them, over night) into a graceful and serene young lady. They didn't notice the quiet wistfulness in her eyes, or the sad watchfulness in the way she observed the others around her.

Sometimes Chihiro couldn't help bet resent the whole of her adventure. The months she spent serving and cleaning and helping those spirits had altered her. Though her parents noticed a change, they simply chalked it up to their daughter growing up, and, in a way, they were correct.

However having that strange fey-light in her eyes hadn't helped Chihiro make any friends at her new school. At all. She wasn't bullied precisely… nor was she mocked or made fun of, not even behind her back.

She simply didn't exist to the other children. And indeed, she seemed not to exist to her teachers either. There were many times when she had caught a surprised flush on her professor's faces when they realized they had skipped her name during roll call or when they hadn't collected her homework along with the other students'.

Chihiro harbored a secret fear that sometimes even her parents forgot about her.

"Chihiro!" her mother called, sounding impatient, "You're going to be late!"

This morning, however, she seemed to be an exasperating entity.  
>Perversely cheered by this fact, Chihiro scooped her long brown hair into a ponytail with her prized glittering band and threw back her covers.<p>

Getting dressed was a bit of a hassle as she had not yet found the energy (or the inclination) to unpack all of her clothes. It was her books and her favored figurines that Chihiro had unpacked and set lovingly around her room first; clothes were merely an unhappy necessity.

After she was dressed, she clomped downstairs and saw her mother setting a plate in her spot at the table.

"There you are! If you don't hurry and eat, you're going to be late!"

Chihiro stood in the doorway of the kitchen watching her mother. The soft brown hair (a shade or so lighter than Chiroro's own) was brushed back from her face and she looked impatient and a little distracted.

"Well? Aren't you going to sit down and eat?"

Chihiro had a sudden and barely-repressed urge to inform her mother of the fact that she had been turned into a sow recently. The fact that bacon was sizzling in the frying pan forced a hysterical giggle from her.

"Chihiro? Sweetie, what's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she said finally, sitting down at her spot and nibbling daintily at the edge of a thick slice of sweet bread.

Her mother watched her for a few seconds, her brow creasing in concern. At the first bite of eggs her distracted expression returned and she tended to the kettle on the stove that was just about to whistle.

Chihiro reflected on her recently gained oddness; nothing felt the same any more. As she ate her sweet bread and eggs she remembered the spirits of both things that she had cleaned up after. Sweeping up the bright yellow feathers of the egg spirits had been… and experience.

She wondered if these particular spirits had failed, letting their charges be cracked, fried and eaten.

Chihiro felt ill and could no longer eat the eggs. She nibbled instead on the sweet bread and sipped at barley tea until her mother ushered her from the table with more dire warnings of being late.

Walking along the hard asphalt of her street towards her new (she still thought of it as new and she felt as though she always would) school, Chihiro felt a little better. Her street was lined with trees and their bright green leaves fluttered and sparkled in the morning sunlight like rare jewels.

They reminded her forcefully of Haku's scales.

At the memory of her friend, a lance of silver pain went through her. She had hoped…

But it didn't matter what she had hoped, she reminded herself; Haku was a spirit. She… most certainly was not.

Something about that fact made Chihiro want to cry.

He had said they would see each other again, hadn't he? Hadn't he promised her? He said he was going to go back to Yubaba to terminate his contract. But how long did that take? And after he left the bath house, would he go back to the Kohaku River?

But there were apartments there now… did that mean he would flood the drained and filled in river bed and kill the people living there now?

With a shuddering sigh, Chihiro realized that she had come to a standstill in the middle of a street and was staring up at a flawless blue sky that promised summer was on its way.

She shook her head, got her bearings, and continued walking.

Girls and boys were clustered together in groups of two or more as they walked towards the school; laughter and talk rang out against the walls that enclosed the campus. Chihiro walked through the opened gates alone and looked on with mild envy at the laughing girls her age. They were clearly gossiping about the boys who were just as clearly aware of the attention and preening from it.

She looked curiously at the boys that were receiving so much attention and felt nothing but slight boredom. _They_ couldn't turn into dragons; _they _hadn't saved her from the strange Yubaba bird and they certainly hadn't saved her from drowning when she could barely walk.

So they were found wanting.

When she looked away from them they were not deflated just as, when she looked at them, there was no preening for her.

She walked though the doors of the school as a terrible thought struck her.

What if she _was_ a spirit? What if she had somehow died during her stay in the spirit world?

But then her parents wouldn't notice her either; and though they were neglectful, they certainly didn't ignore her.

Chihiro hadn't been puzzled over the fact that so many people had seemed not to see or notice her. Which now that she thought of it, was puzzling in and of itself. Why shouldn't such a thing bother her?

True, for the first few days she had been eagerly looking for a silvery dragon to fly through the sky after her, but as the days progressed and Haku didn't show up she began to simply… exist.

She sat at her desk –at the back, but at least close to the windows- and settled her bag beside her and began fishing out the books and her pencil case. Before the other students had arrived she was checking over her homework and preparing for class.

When the teacher arrived and the bells chimed, Chihiro settled into the flow of her life.

It wasn't until lunch, eating alone on the roof and staring up at the sky, that she realized that she was drowning in the monotonous flow of her life.

This epiphany was a quiet one. It didn't make her cry out in surprise or leap to her feet in alarm, she didn't gasp suddenly or burst into tears… she simply closed her eyes against her reality and set her lunch aside.

The world she lived in and the world she longed for were completely separate. They would never join, she realized. The spirit world was beyond her reach now.

Chihiro wondered if she could go back to the bath house… if Yubaba would let her continue to work there… to, perhaps, become her apprentice.

If not, she thought that Zeniba might indeed allow her to stay, to live in swamp bottom and help out around the cottage. Perhaps there she could learn magic… perhaps there she could find Haku again.

When the bells chimed in signal to the end of the lunch period, Chihiro gathered up what was left of her food and packed it away into her bag. No one talked to her on her way back to class, no one stopped her or waved or smiled at her.

She drifted through her own life as if she was merely an observer in the events and had no real power over them.

When she sat down at her desk again she looked out her window hoping to see that ribbon of silver dragon scales against the bright blue of the sky but all that she saw were incoming clouds that promised rain.

She listened to the teacher and took notes. She raised her hand to answer question but was never called on to answer. The day drifted by around her and, when the bells rang she packed her bag and left without a saying a word.

As she stepped from the campus and onto the street her school was on raindrops began to patter against the sun-warmed sidewalk. Without looking, Chihiro reached into her bag and pulled out a red umbrella.

As she shook it out she saw a small scrap of paper flutter from its folds and settle lightly on the ground. Looking at it curiously, Chihiro held her umbrella over her head and stepped forward to pick it up.

Oddly, it was written on what seemed to be very old, very fine, very frayed paper; a long strip that was not unlike an _ofuda._ It was curled around a slim bit of wood that was lacquered bright red.

The moment the little splinter of wood fell into Chihiro's waiting palm it felt as though electricity was racing over her skin. The hair at the nape of her neck lifted and her breath became short.

Though she was oblivious to it, the eyes of her fellow students turned to her in some surprise. Words were exchanged, rumors whispered. The girl with the lightning in her strange, sad eyes looked familiar but no one seemed to know her.

How strange that was since she wore a uniform and stood just outside of the school's gates.

Chihiro turned the paper over with shaking hands and saw written there, in neat and precise kanji.

_"Chihiro,"_ the letter started, _"though you have experienced what few mortals do, and it has changed you unutterably, you must not allow it to rule you. Your world waits. Live within it, not around it. It will not last."_

The signature lifted Chihiro's heart and mind from the malaise she had been living through for the past week. The rain thundered down on her umbrella, filling the air with its sweet smell.

She clutched the small red splinter in her hand, and grinned at nothing in particular.

She wondered now if it was not that Haku hadn't come to her, but if she had simply not seen him.

Walking briskly away from her school and smiling delightedly to herself, Chihiro admitted that she was different than she had been before, and she was different than her class mates and her teachers but she would always, always have her memories of the Spirit World and what she won from it.


End file.
